Boomtown

Hi! Welcome to the 8^th edition of Boomtown, our newsletter written and published every Friday at exactly 4:20 p.m. If you’re reading this for the first time, then welcome. As of this writing, not only are we completely blazed out of our minds, but we can’t wait to continue blazing ahead for the rest of the weekend. For what else can we do other than blaze ourselves to splits over the topsy-turvy world of ours today, a world lurching with material progress, yet a world lurching with hate, paranoia and misinformation, all enveloped in a gigantic financial system.

Let’s start blazing for this weekend. Today, we start the fight against bad logic.

They Want To Control You With Bad Logic

It’s never been more apparent, never been more obvious and never been more blatant.

All across the world, we are seeing the renaissance of divide and rule, being shouted at us from the rooftops, an epidemic of hate, misinformation and crass being peddled out by some ‘leaders’ and their many ‘followers’, and a disappointing state of affairs as more and more people continue to regress back towards meekness and weakness, as if their silence and uncertainty about the world, would somehow keep them insulated from it all. Is the renaissance of reason possible?

Of course. In fact, the good people of reason are already alive and well, and continue to push back against the melee of negativity, hate and misinformation.

More and more people continue to think as if the world has already gone to the dogs, and that evil and hate have won. But we disagree. Every year, every century, every millennia, these cycles of history tend to repeat themselves over and over again, just like how it is happening again all over the world as of this writing. We refuse to stop hoping, and we also refuse to stop being quiet against loud, hateful, ill-informed voices, and push back with loud logic and reason, refusing to stoop down to the levels being pandered about by unreasonable people. Just like history, this phase will pass. All of them will fall.

After all, aren’t our current crop of leaders a reflection of the thoughts of overall society itself?

And secondly, doesn’t human psychology dictate that humanity focuses on negative aspects more than the positive ones? Yes, it’s true. Of course, not that we should ignore the negative aspects or anything. We’re just saying. A majority of society is good. It’s just that the bad ones are often more vocal and confident. God knows why that is. Maybe because the bad ones know they aren’t as brainy and hence, their need to compensate. No idea.

Let’s keep blazing.

Nationalism is Ok, but is practically useless

Time and again we’ve seen nationalist rhetoric in the media and among the mainstream masses in general, as if it’s a cock and hen-fight where men and women compete to determine who is the most nationalist among them all? The sad news is that there is no competition in existence that can measure the strength of one’s nationalism. If there is, readers are more than welcome to share it with us. We’ll talk about it in the next newsletter.

Constantly, topics like ‘danger to the country’, ‘threat to the country’ and ‘anti-national’ are so bandied about, that all we do is keep blazing and laughing our guts off. Because here’s the thing – ask yourself, if you’re proud of your country (for any reason, any reason), what is the point? Other than making you feel good for some time (not more than a few hours), you’ll come back to reality and start thinking about making money, having sex, eating and drinking.

Nationalism cannot solve our healthcare issues. Nationalism cannot solve our economic issues. Nationalism cannot solve our personal issues like relationships or professional rivalry. Nationalism cannot solve our financial issues. If Nationalism cannot do any of these things, why is Nationalism so hyped up by Indian media and the mainstream masses, who pretend as if Nationalism can solve all the mentioned issues? Some Nationalism is ok, like we said, it feels good for a few hours (that’s why we have the Independence Day and the Republic Day), but going overboard and calling people anti-national just for the sake of it?

Let’s keep blazing.

The Bad Logic Inherent in Drug Abuse Arguments

In our fight against bad logic, our readers must know that we’re after clarity and truth, not feelings and emotions, because though feelings and emotions are important, they are not important in comparison to facts and truth. Its truth and facts that shape the trajectories of society’s progress, not feelings or emotions, unless of course the said feelings and emotions are used in a healthy way and do not come in the way of reality and truth.

Drug abuse is a topic that perfectly attracts all sorts of opinions and feelings.

People tend to link drug use with crimes (robberies, rapes, murders, other modes of physical violence), terrorism (funds to procure weapons), mental health (the person is declared ‘unfit’ for making rational decisions or ‘anti-social’ behaviour – can someone define anti-social please? What exactly is anti-social?) and tend to pretend as if their sobriety is somehow ‘virtuous’ (to whom, no one says. Maybe to their family members and friend circle). So in our fight against bad logic, today we decided to answer back with some very very simple points and questions. Points that our readers can use in their fight against bad logic so prevalent in India today.

First, we have to categorize ‘drugs’ and define drugs as ‘substances that cause altered mental and consciousness states’ in human beings. Drugs can be classed into two as per the raw material – natural (take the plant from the wild and use it) and synthetic (even if the base comes from a plant, the end product has been ‘made’ in a lab). By this definition – cannabis is natural because users use the plant directly, while cocaine and heroin are synthetic even though their base comes from a plant (since the making ‘process’ has been invented by humans).

Assume that Alcohol, tobacco and pharmaceutical, synthetic painkillers and medications , all legal, do not exist. Because bad logic adherents tend to believe that if they’re legal, they are ‘fine’.

Does India have a drug ‘problem’?

No we don’t. If we’ve taken out alcohol, tobacco and pharmaceutical, synthetic meds, all three of which are legal and liable to be abused, India has approximately 4-5 crore drug users – as ratified by the Ministry of Social Justice in their report titled ‘Magnitude of Substance Abuse in India’ in association with the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in 2019.
India, with 4-5 crore drug users – is that a ‘problem’?

Not really. 4-5 crore out of approximately 90 crore (30-40 crores are below the age of 18) voting population means 5.5% of the population. A very easily manageable number. If we were to include the entire population of 130 crores, the percentage of drug users comes to 3.84%. Out of this, approximately 3 crore users are cannabis users, not exactly bothersome in our opinion because of the biological relationship cannabis shares with human beings in addition to its medical properties, our readers already know this. Therefore that leaves us with around 2 crore people who are using hard drugs like cocaine, heroin and other party drugs like MDMA and LSD.

Let us not believe as if these 2 crore people use these drugs every day. Oh No.

People need money to pay for them. Therefore rest assured no one is doing these drugs every single day. If they do, trust us, they would be dysfunctional, dead and worse, bankrupt in no time. And these users do not want to do that. They probably switch to alcohol or tobacco or cannabis for alternate days.

We’ve run out of points for today, but we will continue to hold on to the fight against bad logic.

Let’s keep blazing.